The real price to be paid for a travesty of justice

Earlier this week the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeals of RCMP members Benjamin “Monty” Robinson and Kwesi Millington and both began serving their sentences, two years less a day and 30 months respectively after totally undeserved perjury convictions.

As I have said previously, this is a travesty of justice. The four RCMP officers who attended a disturbance call at YVR in October, 2007 which resulted in the death of Polish traveller Robert Dziekanski, were just doing their jobs and now are both in prison. I’m disgusted.

There’s a lot of blame to be thrown around here, but none of it is on these members. They were failed by the seniour leadership of the RCMP and failed badly when they would not say publicly that these four officers acted according to their training and RCMP policy.

They were failed by the Braidwood Commission of Inquiry into the death of Dziekanski when Mr. Justice Thomas Braidwood failed to take into account the forensic video analysis of Grant Fredericks which showed demonstrably that the four members were telling the truth and the baying media hounds hadn’t a clue. Yet he sided with the hounds.

They were failed by the gutless politicians who had their own agenda that had nothing to do with justice and the truth.

Of the four, two were acquitted at bar and two were convicted. The two white officers were acquitted. The First Nations member and the black member were both convicted and now jailed. I am not making a specific accusation here, I merely am making an observation of fact.

I spoke with Kwesi Millington’s wife, Cindy, a few days after her husband turned himself in to begin serving his sentence. She was, as you might imagine, very upset. They expect that he will be terminated by the RCMP given the circumstances and that means his paycheque stops. Equally, while jailed he won’t be able to earn at another occupation now that his policing career is over.

Her salary isn’t enough to keep up with the mortgage, bills and legal fees they must now incur to get a parole lawyer to steer that process forward to ensure Kwesi gets parole at the earliest opportunity. She said she’d likely have to sell Kwesi’s car while he was in prison while using up what savings they had.

Kwesi has been transferred into the federal prison system in Kingston, Ontario. He is in protective custody because of his occupation. That means he spends his time in a small cell by himself with just 30 minutes of exercise a day with guards as company.

His first facility there will be for 2-3 months while Corrections Canada bureaucrats assess his case to determine which facility he should be assigned to serve his time. In the interim he won’t be allowed to call Cindy for several weeks until he gets his assigned phone card.

If I told you the whole of this story and how these members have been utterly abandoned by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and left dangling in the breeze you might dismiss it as improbable fiction. This is the national police force after all. They have an iconic reputation and all that. Surely they would do the right thing, after all, their motto is “Maintiens le droit” – Maintain the right. And surely, you would be wrong.

The once proud force has done exactly the wrong thing in this matter every step of the way and much of it deliberately knowing what would happen to their members. It’s beyond offensive.

For regular readers of this space, my many supporters, police officers, retired and former police officers or just those of you who who can’t stomach injustice, I have set up a GoFundMe account to help Cindy and Kwesi in this trying time.

For the record, Kwesi was a young officer. When he used the Taser that night, it was the first time he’d ever deployed the weapon. When he testified at the Braidwood Commission, it was the first time he had ever testified in any forum.

Robinson was a Corporal in the RCMP. He has a pension and his income won’t suffer during his incarceration. He will, but at least his family will be okay. The circumstances are much different for Cindy Millington. She didn’t sign up for any of this.

She loves her man and was proud of him for what he was doing for a living, knowing all of the potential bad things that can befall a cop. But not this.

Unfair doesn’t even begin to explain what has happened to these four men. Worse for the two who are currently in the prison system. Worse still, for those who love them.

13 Responses

Leo, is there somewhere where we can donate & put some money in for Kwesi to purchase items through the Prison Stores system? As well, perhaps shared privately, an address to send him letters or e-mails if he is able to get them,in order to help keep his spirits up. If there ever was a politically charged conviction, this was it. Unreal that the Mounties left him out to dry. Do not tarnish the reputation of the red serge…..Effing bikers treat their guys a thousand times better if one of them ends up doing time. Sad. Hope those out here, & perhaps some cops from back east can help him out while he is inside.

Mark my words. Soon there will be a case when a police officer sues their home department for “failure to train”. Less than 80 hours of control tactics training does not even begin to address the challenges of going hands-on with arrestees so they feel that they must or resort to their belt tools. Hairdressers, physiotherapists, CFL football players get a tad more than 80 hours before they go to work, right? The consequences of them making mistakes are not nearly as dire as when police officers do so. That is why we are pushing to have Police Judo training adopted as a preferred prerequisite and also to have that training continued throughout an officer’s career.

What a screwed up justice system. It gives $10.5 million to a terrorist and puts a police officer doing his job in prison. I would never recommend anyone join the RCMP, after they allowed this to happen and how they so poorly equip their members that several have died in gun battles (Meyerthorpe and Moncton come to mind).

I wrote about these members a few months ago. Sad day for justice indeed! All things being equal…implicit bias within the justice system persists regardless. #implicitbias. Blacks and Indigenous people are over-represented in the criminal justice system in Canada, including the prisons. Kwesi and Monty, regardless of their profession and service to this nation, could not escape this reality!

Leo, you are doing a good job with all this, but have to disagree with you on a couple of points…a) to suggest that they may have been convicted due to their race, without any evidence of bias seems a little over the top b) I agree that the RCMP let them down in terms of their policy and protocol, but they were not convicted of assault..they were convicted of “colluding to make up testimony”, that is a substantial difference….in any event it seems like they will have their day in Court, as the Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear their case….to rely on “Forensic Video” evidence of Grant Fredricks as a way to determine the truthfulness is an inexact science to say the least…..keep up the good work….